by Geoff North
“Not this again.” Abe was frustrated. Maybe it was the constant cold making him irritable. Maybe it was the stress of caring for Adam, and the lack of sleep. They had been through so much together, defied a hostile world that wanted them dead. “Why do you keep fighting me about this?”
“I’m not fighting you.” She tried to keep her voice low. “But I have every right to be mad. Ever since we came here it’s been about you. Abraham’s quest into the frozen north—his boneheaded obsession to return home. And for what? We have a child now, Abe. Where are we taking him? What do you think we’ll find? The alien? It’s seventy-five fucking thousand years in the future!” Illee was sitting up in her blankets. Adam had started to cry. Becky kept going. “I’ve stuck with you through it all, crossed half a world that keeps getting colder and colder. We should’ve headed south—or at least stayed where we were in the beginning and fought for a home. I would’ve been happy with that. But no—I had to play along with you and this… this fantasy of yours. So don’t accuse me of fighting you. Be thankful I’ve come this far.”
She stood and circled twice, as if searching for an escape route out of their bleak, white surroundings. “Look around! What kind of life is this? How many more nights are we going to sleep on empty plains of ice and snow?” Abe reached out to her and she batted his hand away. Becky’s anger wasn’t exhausted. She slapped him hard across the face and started to run.
“Becky!” She was already ten long strides away before he could get to his feet. “Don’t run!”
Illee saw the danger at the same moment and rushed after her. “Becky! Stop!”
Abe stumbled over Adam, and fell face first into the snow. By the time he cleared his eyes, Becky was gone and Illee had come to a lurching halt. “No!”
All was white before Becky’s eyes, and suddenly she was surrounded in black. She was falling. She flailed her arms and legs in emptiness. Her nails bit into cold and scraped along ice. Her left boot caught next and she was tossed back, twirling end over end. She heard a sharp crack and realized it was her shoulder hitting the ice wall of a seemingly bottomless crevasse. The pain didn’t register. There was no time. Becky twisted her body, no longer aware which way was up or down, desperately trying to right the spin. Her forehead bumped ice, then her rear end. The space was narrowing. She pushed her bare palms against the sliding surface and her back started to rub along ice behind her. Becky started to slow, and then she came to a jolting halt.
Panic took hold as she tried to breathe and snow filled her mouth and nostrils. She was buried in it up to her eyes and had to twist her head around in order to build up enough space for air to work down into her lungs. A blinding pain suddenly hit from somewhere below. Becky pulled her arms through the heaviness and her fingers broke through the surface, clawing more snow away from her face. The pain was coming from her left leg. She tried to force it up and the agony intensified. It was caught in ice somewhere below the knee. Becky yelled out but the sound was an echoless moan.
Illee pulled Abe into the snow beside her, six feet from the edge Becky had plummeted over. “Not another inch,” she hissed, “or we’ll all fall in.”
Abe wanted to scream in her face. He wanted to leap into the yawning black slit before them and take his chances with whatever lay below. He felt a dull thud beneath their feet. Illee’s eyes were like saucers; her head gave a quick shake. She mouthed the words—don’t move.
The plate of snow they were spread out on shifted again. Abe felt it drop a few inches. Adam was crying somewhere behind. Illee started to wriggle back slowly on her stomach. As much as it pained him, Abe followed. Three feet. Four feet. Six. Eight.
They stood back up again twelve feet from the chasm. Abe ran back to where they had slept. Illee called after him. “Where are you going?”
The boat they had spent a considerable part of their journey in carried their food and dwindling supplies. Abe threw furs and crude fishing poles aside, searching. A hook Illee had carved from a bear’s tooth caught deep in the pad of his thumb. He ignored the pain and found the coil of rope frozen to the hull. He pulled at the stiffness of it until all fifty feet came free from the bottom.
“I think I can hear her down there,” Illee said as he returned. “Sounds like she’s a long way down. There won’t be enough rope.”
“Then I’ll climb down the ice with my fingers.” Abe tossed one end to her and started for the edge. The snow shifted again as he approached and a chunk of it broke away falling soundlessly into the chasm.
“Not from there! You’ll bury her completely.”
Abe struggled back from the edge, sinking into snow up to his waist. He worked his way at a safe distance along the crevasse until he was twenty feet from where Becky had fallen over. Illee followed on a parallel path, holding the rope by its end between them in one hand, the other stopping Adam from chasing after his father.
Abe wrapped a few feet of rope around his wrist and started back for the ledge. He didn’t look at Illee as he spoke. “If this doesn’t work… if we can’t get back out…”
“He’ll be safe with me. I swear it.”
Abe turned towards them, preparing to repel backwards. The plate of white broke six feet from the edge and he started to fall. He pulled on the rope and inhaled snow.
Too much snow. Adam and Illee weren’t far enough away. They’re falling in after me.
The rope burned at his palm as it went tight. His elbow locked and the force travelled into his shoulder. A ton of collapsing snow pounded his skull and smashed at his back but Abe held on.
When it had finished Abe looked up and saw the tips of Illee’s boots poking out over the edge forty feet away. “You’re too close!”
“Didn’t have much choice,” she called down. Her voice sounded a mile away. “Hurry! I don’t know how much longer my heels will hold in the ice.”
Abe looked down into blackness. “Becky! Can you hear me? Becky! Are you okay?”
“My leg… it’s caught in ice.” She sounded even further away than Illee.
“Can you work it free? Can you crawl towards me?”
Silence for ten seconds. “I think something’s broken down there… Hurts really bad.”
Abe glanced up. He could see Illee’s knees now. They were shaking with effort. He touched the wall of ice before him. His fingers ran along it and found a crack. There were fractures, some narrow, some wide, running throughout. Maybe just enough to climb back out.
He let go of the rope.
Abe landed in the mound of loose snow that had fallen a minute earlier. It took him a moment to catch his breath and call back to Illee that he was alright.
“Abe?” Becky’s voice sounded closer.
He slid on his back towards her, bracing his arms out against the crevasse walls in case the snow fell out underneath him. “I’m coming… almost there.”
“I’m sorry for what I said.” Her voice was weak. “I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“Save your strength. We can fight some more when we’re out of here.”
The sole of his boot kicked snow into her face accidentally. She spat the moisture out. “I’m right here.” Even in the dark Becky could see the expression on his face. “Pretty stupid, hey?”
Abe started digging around her chin and throat. “We’ve been in tighter spots.”
“Very funny.”
He dug around Becky’s shoulders and soon her arms were free enough to help. A few minutes later she was clear of snow to her waist. “See? We’ll have you out in no time.”
She pulled her right leg up moments later. Becky wrapped her arms around his neck and Abe prepared to pull. “Go easy,” she whispered.
Becky cried out and he released her. “I’ll have to dig deeper. Clear it all away and see how bad you’re stuck.” His numb fingers clawed more snow. Soon they were rubbing up against the cold exposed skin of her thigh. It became warmer. Sticky. “You’re bleeding a little… Just a bit.” He found her swollen knee. Below that the
snow ended. Her leg was wedged between the two walls of glacial ice.
Becky pushed his hand aside and felt around the shredded flesh. “I’m not getting out of here, am I?”
“Of course you are,” he replied quietly.
Her breathing became unsteady and panicked. “My leg?—I can’t lose my leg, Abe. Please—get me out of here!” She screamed the last words.
There was a thudding sound all around them. Abe looked up, expecting to see another section of snow falling towards them. There was only a dull slit of grey sky, like a monstrous eye setting to close. A low twanging noise followed the thud. He had heard that sound before, somewhere.
“The ice,” Becky whispered. “It’s the ice.”
Abe remembered another winter morning from his childhood. He had snuck out onto the pond north of the house with Sheila when they were seven years old. They wanted to try out their new skates. Abe was going to join the Pee-Wee hockey club. Sheila was anxious to begin her second year of figure skating. The ice was less than three inches thick. He heard his father yelling. They had turned and saw him running towards the pond. And then the ice made an unusual sound; a twanging, rippling noise—low and booming like thunder rolling beneath the blades of their skates. They hadn’t gone too far out, and their father got them back safely.
But Abe remembered that sound. It continued to boom and twang all around them in the bottom of their glacial trap. That old claustrophobic dread returned, and it took all of his will to fight the urge to abandon Becky there and start climbing his way out.
“The ice is moving,” Becky said.
They waited and listened. Another twang. Louder. A cracking sound that made them wince and shut their eyes. There was a final monstrous thud and Abe dropped down a foot.
Becky screamed and threw herself at him. She was free. Abe pulled her through the snow towards the rope hanging twenty feet above. Becky wrapped her arms around his neck as Abe dug his nails into the cracks and started to climb. Snow fell from above stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. His fingers found the frayed rope end. How strong are you, Illee? They started moving faster. Strong enough, he realized, as the woman pulled from above. He helped her along, digging into the wider cracks with his feet and pushing. Becky’s grip weakened. He could feel her beginning to slide down his back. “Hang on—we’re almost there.”
Her fingers tightened into the fur stretched tight across his throat but Abe could feel her slipping more. She wasn’t going to make it. He dug into one last crack of ice and released the rope, swinging his arm back to support Becky at the same time.
“So weak,” she mumbled. “So tired.”
“I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”
A strong grip wrapped around Abe’s wrist. “And I’ve got you.” Illee lifted them clear the last three feet. They pulled Becky away from the crevasse edge. Abe watched with a sinking feeling in his stomach as a trail of pink trailed behind her. She had lost her leg below the knee.
***
“It’s healed nicely.” Illee touched the smooth stump. “Faster than I would’ve thought.”
They were in the canoe. Abe was seated in back, paddling slowly, listening to Illee talk and hoping Becky might reply. She didn’t. He felt responsible. Becky had lost her limb because of his selfish fixation. They had made up the day before, shortly after the rescue and as soon as she regained consciousness. Becky didn’t hate him. She didn’t blame him. She had been scared for Adam, scared for all of them. She was sorry for the things she had said. But Abe still worried during the long silences as she sat at the front of the boat and stared at the empty space where her foot used to be.
Three days later Becky spoke about it for the first time. “It’s longer .”
Abe was helping Adam with a piece of raw fish, picking the small bones out before allowing the boy to chew the rest down. “What’s longer, the days? They all seem long to me.”
The ocean was a day and a half behind them. Their journey east, towards the Rockies and plains beyond, had begun. The meat Adam was smooshing around in his mouth had been caught along the edge of a half-frozen river they were now camped along. There was no more ocean shore to follow. Of course she would feel the length of days, Abe thought. The remainder of their journey would take place on foot, and she only had the one. She had to be dragged along in the boat, caring for Adam.
“My leg is longer.”
Abe and Illee crawled over for a look.
“See?” Becky indicated with her thumb and fore finger just below the knee. “There was nothing below my kneecap, now there’s at least four inches of new skin and bone.”
Abe wondered at first if she was just imagining it, wishing for something that couldn’t possibly happen. But he had cleaned the wound initially himself. There had been nothing below the knee. And now there was four inches of hard bone, soft muscle, and white skin.
Illee touched it and giggled. “I knew we were different, but I never thought… It’s growing back, Becky. Your leg is growing back.”
Chapter 23
The cell phones piled in the center of the living room had gone silent. If Sheila had to guess, she would have put the total at close to five-hundred. The last one chirped its missed call twelve hours earlier. Two days before—when the last had been voluntarily surrendered at the threat of family members suffering terrible consequences—the mound of shiny black, white, silver, and bits of pink was an incessant squawk of beeps, rings, dings, honks, and whistles. One by one the noises and vibrations subsided. Ring tones and snippets of songs slowly ceased. Concerned parties stopped calling. Alerts and updates died out. Batteries ran out of juice, and the entirety of a small town’s access to the outside world through modern technology ended.
Silence. Sheila was thankful for it and terrified at the same time. Someone somewhere would look into the sudden absence of an entire community from the rest of humanity. Sheila and Allan would be discovered and taken into custody. One look at Allan and they would call in doctors and scientists. He would fight back, of course. He would command them to do stupid, childish things, and they would listen in the beginning. But others would come. The thing in the woods would be found. After that, Sheila wasn’t sure what would happen. She was, after all, only a young farm girl with a very unique ability. But she wasn’t too young to make a good guess. It would turn out bad. People would be hurt and silenced—permanently perhaps. The alien would either be destroyed or taken away in secrecy. That was the best outcome she could see. She didn’t want to dwell much on the other possibilities.
“It isn’t as bad as it looks.” Allan said. He was seated in the armchair across from her. “We only have to keep people quiet a little longer. It told me.”
“The ‘others’ are coming,” Sheila replied solemnly. “It told you ‘the time is near’. Who are the others, Allan? An alien rescue party? The CIA? Abe and Becky?’ She was becoming agitated again. Frantic was the word Allan used for her outbursts. “Why does it only talk to you anymore? What are the two of you keeping from me?”
“You tried to murder me in my sleep. We can’t trust you anymore. Why should I tell you any more than that?” He brushed her back with his fingers. “Calm yourself.”
Sheila felt the hot rush in her face cool. It was true. She had snuck up on him while he was sleeping a few days before with a big knife in her hand. She would’ve driven it down into the center of his brain if the thing in the woods hadn’t woken him first.
She leaned back into the couch and breathed slowly. “You’re more powerful than me now. It’s made you stronger. Has it been worth it? Your skin, your eyes… everything. It’s killing you and you don’t seem to care.”
“I care.”
“Then let’s get out of here. We’ll take a car and drive away. We can start over, somewhere else. Maybe the effects will reverse. Maybe we can become normal again.”
“Normal? The effects are permanent, and you know we can’t leave—that was one of the first and most important commands
it gave us. All we can do is wait—wait and keep everyone shut up.”
“Until the others arrive.” She sighed and resigned herself once again to the hopelessness of it all. Her eyes drifted from the pile of dead phones, past Allan’s greyish, diseased skull, and out the living room window through the pouring rain towards the shed where her father and brother used to work on old cars and broken farm machinery. No one worked out there anymore. It was used solely for storage these days. There were over eight-hundred dead desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles once owned by the residents of Birdtail municipality jammed in there now. The town had been forced into silence, but it wouldn’t last. Sheila started thinking about those bad possibilities again. “So what do we do until then?”
Allan lips drew back into a toothless smile that brought her focus back to his black eyes. “I’m going to keep busy. You’re going to lie back on the couch and go to sleep.”
***
Hank Whitman brought the black Escalade to a slow halt twenty yards short of the manned blockade. It wasn’t much of a blockade, and it wasn’t heavily manned; one old Ford half ton held together primarily with rust, and two pot-bellied hicks sitting on the tailgate.
“Looks formidable,” his partner said from the passenger seat. They were alike in many ways. Hank was average height and powerfully built, as was Mike Fulcher. Both men were pushing fifty. The lean muscle of youth had given way to a combination of meat and fat that men tended to fit into with middle age. Hank was bald. He kept the remaining crescent of grey above and behind his ears trimmed to the width of a dime. Mike still had a full head of hair and dyed it jet black, but like his partner, and in accordance with Company policy, kept it shaved tight to his skull.
Hank shrugged his beefy shoulders and cut the ignition. “This is the fourth back road into town we’ve tried. I’m starting to get the feeling these rednecks aren’t the tourist-encouraging types.”
Mike chuckled. “Terrible thing when a small town turns its back to the outside. You know, what with the economy and all. People gotta reach out if they want to keep up with the times.”